Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Kuroda speech out now: Japan’s Economy and Monetary Policy (full text is here, PDF)
Headlines on Bloomberg and Reuters
- No change to stance BOJ won’t hesitate to adjust policy if needed to meet 2 pct inflation target
- BOJ will maintain QQE for as long as needed to stably achieve its price target
- BOJ has been taking action and will continue to do so to achieve price target
- Shouldn’t stop efforts to shift public’s deflationary mindset
- Japan’s economy showing weaknesses mainly in output
- Positive economic cycle is intact as a trend
- Japan’s economy continues to recover moderately as a trend
- Japan steadily shifting away from deflationary mindset
- Consumer inflation to reach around 2% in or around fiscal 2015
“economy continues to recover moderately as a trend”… I thought the head of the BOJ would have seen the GDP figures … but there you go
More:
- Japan’s economy to continue growing above its potential, which is estimated to be around 0.5 pct or lower, as a trend
- Japan’s output gap to continue improving as a trend, move to positive territory
Deary me … OK, Kuroda-san … here is the Japanese GDP data for the past half year:
- GDP Annualized (seasonally adjusted) for Q2, final y/y: -7.1%
- GDP Annualized (seasonally adjusted) for Q3 preliminary: -1.6% y/y
Even both my grandmothers could see that negative results for GDP are not ‘continues to recover moderately’. And both of them are passed away (or, recovering moderately, if you prefer).
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Nothing in Kuroda’s comments strike me as being new.
